B
Bob Gleason
Just something I thought about during these days of grief and tragedy...........Maybe a history lesson is in order for some AND PERHAPS WE SHOULD FLY THIS FLAG AS WELL.
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Peter Easton
Hi Bob --
Thanks for the historical reminder. They're always helpful. I must come across here at times as your nemesis, which I don't mean to be -- your remarks have really helped bring out issues and rally folks. But multiple points of view are the essence of democrary, aren't they, and don't we need mightily to affirm those virtues in times when they are so threatened?
One thing, perhaps, to remember about the Revolutionary War is that it, too, was at that time a pretty new kind of warfare. The British took us for a rabble in arms, cowards with no decent army who would not come out in the open and fight like we were supposed to do by the rules of 17th century engagement. They had brightly colored uniforms and presented themselves "manfully" (and sometimes stupidly) on the official field of battle; we crept around -- often in buckskins, though sometimes in official garb -- behind stone walls and through middlesexes sniping away, less regularly marshalling ourselves for set battle engagements. Wasn't it, in a sense, the beginning of guerilla warfare, rooted perhaps more in the French and Indian Wars than in anything that had transpired in Europe?
Seems to me that guerilla warfare -- much furthered by Mao Tse Tung and the Vietcong -- is coming to one sort of logical conclusion in current patterns of terrorism; and if we don't recognize that and understand that we are in a new ballpark, we run the risk of suffering the fate of King George's troops (who were, at that time, the mightiest force in the world, on the face of it).
Of course, these have always tended to be the patterns of people who see themselves as the weaker party and/or see themselves as fighting occupying powers on their own territory. With "globalization", the meaning of those terms has changed a lot, but I see much of the same logic (and I DID NOT SAY "justification" or "right") in the actions of today's terrorists - whether they turn out to be Bin Laden's network, as everyone seems to feel without full proof; or the Hamas, which has already claimed credit; or Sadaam Hussein; or something related to Iran or Iraq...). Once again, to understand these people as irrational cowards may gratify our undestandable need to curse those who attack us without ("proper") warning, but I don't believe it's true and think it serves us poorly in our effort to deal with the situation.
Nancy (Hi Nancy!) and others say Ben Laden's deceptive movements of late demonstrate his cowardice. I don't think so, unless you also think President Bush's zig-zagging from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska to DC yesterday demonstrates either his or our cowardice, or that Presidents FDR and TRuman wouldn't have been put in secret refuge by the secret service at the least hint of pending German or Japanese aggression against Washington. I hold absolutely no candle for Ben Laden, but I don't think it wise to underestimate the guy or the strength of feelings (however misguided) on which his campaign is based.
In that latter connection, there was an interesting panel yesterday on ABC chaired by Peter Jennings on the theme "Why don't they all love us?" or (in Charlie Brown's immortal words) "How can we lose if we're so sincere?" There is a LOT of good feeling out there about the United States, let me say from my particular perspective of having lived overseas for better than 10 years in differing developed and developing countries -- capitalist, socialist and mixed. We are a technological marvel, we are a bastion of liberties and democracies, though still working on our own soul in this regard, as is proper; and, as Ben Wattenburg so eloquently put it, we are in effect "The First Universal Nation."
But there is a lot of mixed feeling and resentment out there as well. We have kept repressive regimes in power in a lot of places, buying, in a sense, our own freedom at the price of others' servitude, even if by no conscious intent of the larger public. My wife being Iranian, I know this particuarly well in that case but have also seen it in Africa and the Caribbean. With six percent of the world's population we consume upwards of thirty percent of its (dwindling) resources, and if the rest of the world were able to adopt over the next fifty years the standard and style of living we have enjoyed over the last fifty, it would truly be ecological disaster for our globe. These are cicumstances that help spawn the kind of extremism that we are facing, even if they in no way excuse it or its acts; and this is certainly part of the agenda on which we need to keep working. You don't want to negotiate from weakness, it is true; but defining just what "strength" is and how to exercise it is going to take more insight than the British Army manifested 225 years ago.
To return a moment to the topic of "insularity" that you addressed, I meant, I think, just and only what I said -- and it has been echoed in the press a number of times these last few days: namely, that due to our continental position in the western hemisphere, we have not had to suffer ON OUR OWN SOIL the violence and conflict of foreign engagements as has typically been the case in European, Asian and African nations. This does not mean that our soldiers in World War II didn't sacrifice an immense and truly heroic amount. (I loved, parenthetically, Stephem Ambrose's remark on NPR in response to questions about his book "Citizen Solider" that the single factor that best accounted for the American-led allies being able to defeat the Wehrmacht on European soil was the fact that the German High Command did not have a suggestion box outside its office!)
Hitler and Napoleon could march all over Europe and Russia, but they couldn't invade the US. The V-2s rained fire down on London, but they didn't touch Washington. We fire-bombed Dresden into oblivion (including masses of "innocent" civilians) to hasten the end of the conflagration, but the Luftwaffe was thankfully never able to reciprocate in kind against Baltimore or Boston. The Nazis ground Paris into the dirt but couldn't get near St. Louis. We leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki in two fateful August days, with over 100,000 civilian deaths, but the Japanese never succeeded to my knowledge in dropping a single bomb on the continental US. Japan decimated Nanking, but didn't march into Seattle.
I am not saying that what we did was WRONG or that it wasn't necessary in context to save our world, and, once again, I am not a pacifist, so we can probably dispense with that label -- but it remains true that we have rarely suffered here ON OUR OWN SOIL the direct costs of international conflict.
Finally, I definitely think that action must be taken. The question, not to get boring about it, is the one that the media has been increasingly echoing -- which action, against whom, in what way and to what specific and general ends? That is going to take our very best and clearest, our most humane and yet most effective, thought. It's, if you want, not a question of being soft-hearted and sweet (as the self-proclaimed "realists" complain) but one of being humanly EFFECTIVE in long-range as well as immediate terms. The Mafia, we used to say, doesn't get angry, it just gets even. May we not simply get inflamed (as we can't help being), but get lucid about how turn this terrible corner into the 21st century.
Peter
Thanks for the historical reminder. They're always helpful. I must come across here at times as your nemesis, which I don't mean to be -- your remarks have really helped bring out issues and rally folks. But multiple points of view are the essence of democrary, aren't they, and don't we need mightily to affirm those virtues in times when they are so threatened?
One thing, perhaps, to remember about the Revolutionary War is that it, too, was at that time a pretty new kind of warfare. The British took us for a rabble in arms, cowards with no decent army who would not come out in the open and fight like we were supposed to do by the rules of 17th century engagement. They had brightly colored uniforms and presented themselves "manfully" (and sometimes stupidly) on the official field of battle; we crept around -- often in buckskins, though sometimes in official garb -- behind stone walls and through middlesexes sniping away, less regularly marshalling ourselves for set battle engagements. Wasn't it, in a sense, the beginning of guerilla warfare, rooted perhaps more in the French and Indian Wars than in anything that had transpired in Europe?
Seems to me that guerilla warfare -- much furthered by Mao Tse Tung and the Vietcong -- is coming to one sort of logical conclusion in current patterns of terrorism; and if we don't recognize that and understand that we are in a new ballpark, we run the risk of suffering the fate of King George's troops (who were, at that time, the mightiest force in the world, on the face of it).
Of course, these have always tended to be the patterns of people who see themselves as the weaker party and/or see themselves as fighting occupying powers on their own territory. With "globalization", the meaning of those terms has changed a lot, but I see much of the same logic (and I DID NOT SAY "justification" or "right") in the actions of today's terrorists - whether they turn out to be Bin Laden's network, as everyone seems to feel without full proof; or the Hamas, which has already claimed credit; or Sadaam Hussein; or something related to Iran or Iraq...). Once again, to understand these people as irrational cowards may gratify our undestandable need to curse those who attack us without ("proper") warning, but I don't believe it's true and think it serves us poorly in our effort to deal with the situation.
Nancy (Hi Nancy!) and others say Ben Laden's deceptive movements of late demonstrate his cowardice. I don't think so, unless you also think President Bush's zig-zagging from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska to DC yesterday demonstrates either his or our cowardice, or that Presidents FDR and TRuman wouldn't have been put in secret refuge by the secret service at the least hint of pending German or Japanese aggression against Washington. I hold absolutely no candle for Ben Laden, but I don't think it wise to underestimate the guy or the strength of feelings (however misguided) on which his campaign is based.
In that latter connection, there was an interesting panel yesterday on ABC chaired by Peter Jennings on the theme "Why don't they all love us?" or (in Charlie Brown's immortal words) "How can we lose if we're so sincere?" There is a LOT of good feeling out there about the United States, let me say from my particular perspective of having lived overseas for better than 10 years in differing developed and developing countries -- capitalist, socialist and mixed. We are a technological marvel, we are a bastion of liberties and democracies, though still working on our own soul in this regard, as is proper; and, as Ben Wattenburg so eloquently put it, we are in effect "The First Universal Nation."
But there is a lot of mixed feeling and resentment out there as well. We have kept repressive regimes in power in a lot of places, buying, in a sense, our own freedom at the price of others' servitude, even if by no conscious intent of the larger public. My wife being Iranian, I know this particuarly well in that case but have also seen it in Africa and the Caribbean. With six percent of the world's population we consume upwards of thirty percent of its (dwindling) resources, and if the rest of the world were able to adopt over the next fifty years the standard and style of living we have enjoyed over the last fifty, it would truly be ecological disaster for our globe. These are cicumstances that help spawn the kind of extremism that we are facing, even if they in no way excuse it or its acts; and this is certainly part of the agenda on which we need to keep working. You don't want to negotiate from weakness, it is true; but defining just what "strength" is and how to exercise it is going to take more insight than the British Army manifested 225 years ago.
To return a moment to the topic of "insularity" that you addressed, I meant, I think, just and only what I said -- and it has been echoed in the press a number of times these last few days: namely, that due to our continental position in the western hemisphere, we have not had to suffer ON OUR OWN SOIL the violence and conflict of foreign engagements as has typically been the case in European, Asian and African nations. This does not mean that our soldiers in World War II didn't sacrifice an immense and truly heroic amount. (I loved, parenthetically, Stephem Ambrose's remark on NPR in response to questions about his book "Citizen Solider" that the single factor that best accounted for the American-led allies being able to defeat the Wehrmacht on European soil was the fact that the German High Command did not have a suggestion box outside its office!)
Hitler and Napoleon could march all over Europe and Russia, but they couldn't invade the US. The V-2s rained fire down on London, but they didn't touch Washington. We fire-bombed Dresden into oblivion (including masses of "innocent" civilians) to hasten the end of the conflagration, but the Luftwaffe was thankfully never able to reciprocate in kind against Baltimore or Boston. The Nazis ground Paris into the dirt but couldn't get near St. Louis. We leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki in two fateful August days, with over 100,000 civilian deaths, but the Japanese never succeeded to my knowledge in dropping a single bomb on the continental US. Japan decimated Nanking, but didn't march into Seattle.
I am not saying that what we did was WRONG or that it wasn't necessary in context to save our world, and, once again, I am not a pacifist, so we can probably dispense with that label -- but it remains true that we have rarely suffered here ON OUR OWN SOIL the direct costs of international conflict.
Finally, I definitely think that action must be taken. The question, not to get boring about it, is the one that the media has been increasingly echoing -- which action, against whom, in what way and to what specific and general ends? That is going to take our very best and clearest, our most humane and yet most effective, thought. It's, if you want, not a question of being soft-hearted and sweet (as the self-proclaimed "realists" complain) but one of being humanly EFFECTIVE in long-range as well as immediate terms. The Mafia, we used to say, doesn't get angry, it just gets even. May we not simply get inflamed (as we can't help being), but get lucid about how turn this terrible corner into the 21st century.
Peter
J
Jean
Lucid insight
Lucid insight
Peter,
I am really going to enjoy for presence and presents on this forum. I like you view points and way of expressing them. Keep letting us share them.
Lucid insight
Peter,
I am really going to enjoy for presence and presents on this forum. I like you view points and way of expressing them. Keep letting us share them.
P
Peter Easton
Thanks, Jean. I certainly ain't got the truth, just one piece of it -- but it has sometimes seemed that I am the sole person with a different view and folks would prefer I just shut up. Thing is, we have a listserve at work (on which I ironically participate less about now) and there the odds seem to run in the other direction. In fact, I just sent off a note this morning to a participant who is a strong advocate of massive vengeance but feels himself outnumbered and unheard saying "hang in there -- we need your viewpoints."
Peter
Peter
